and a quick mental reminder that she wasn’t to think about Leo any further.
‘No problem.’
‘I was just heading to the kitchens.’
‘And I was just coming to see if you wanted to dance.’
Abby blinked. ‘Dance?’ she echoed, faintly taken aback because she couldn’t think of a time when the line between being an employee and a guest had ever blurred before.
‘Yeah,’ said Jake with a grin. ‘You know, that thing where you shuffle your feet around and move, generally in time to music.’
His smile was contagious and she had to force herself not to automatically reciprocate it because, despite all the great things she’d thought he was, he was also very possibly a man who procured ‘fun’ for his brother. ‘Thank you,’ she said politely, ‘but I’m working.’
Jake rocked on his heels and studied her. ‘I heard about what happened earlier.’
Abby instinctively tensed but she continued to look up at him calmly. ‘Did you?’
‘You do realise that it had nothing to do with me, don’t you?’
‘Didn’t it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then what did it have to do with?’
Jake grinned and shrugged. ‘I have absolutely no idea. It’s generally impossible to work out what’s going on in the head of that brother of mine. I’m not nearly as complicated.’
‘No?’
‘No. And I’m certainly not interested in getting involved with his sex life.’ He shuddered theatrically, then looked at her assessingly for a while, as if weighing up his chances and then coming to the conclusion it was worth a gamble. ‘So how about that dance?’
And this time Abby couldn’t help smiling back, because, if she was being honest, she’d never really been able to reconcile the Jake she’d come to know over the weeks with the man she’d briefly considered he might be. It hadn’t made any sense, hadn’t seemed right.
‘I’d love to,’ she said, now with genuine regret because she enjoyed dancing, ‘but I really can’t. There are so many things that still need to be done.’
‘Come on,’ said Jake cajolingly. ‘It’s Christmas. You and your team have done an amazing job tonight. Surely you can relax for five minutes. You deserve it. Besides, you know you want to.’
‘How do you figure that?’
‘You were swaying and your feet were tapping so hard I was beginning to fear for my carpet.’
He was right, and as the music segued into an irresistible mash-up of Christmas tunes she could feel it happening again. Her feet were itching and her body was tingling with the urge to move. And whether it was the effect of his charm and powers of persuasion or the sudden overwhelming need to burn off her frustration at her totally wrecked peace of mind she didn’t know. All she knew was that she was going to relent.
‘All right,’ she said and instantly felt the pressure inside her ease, ‘I guess five minutes wouldn’t hurt.’
‘Great,’ said Jake, taking her hand and leading her towards the dance floor. ‘Let’s hit it.’
Ten seconds ago Leo had been semi-engaged in a one-sided conversation with a planning officer for an East London council and thinking about heading upstairs to bed because he’d had more than enough of tonight.
Firstly he’d hit his limit with all this relentless festive bloody cheer about an hour ago, and if he had to agree one more time that, yes, Christmas was a lovely time of year when frankly he couldn’t think of a less lovely time of year he wouldn’t be responsible for the consequences. And secondly he was sick to the back teeth of the unusual, unnerving and deeply unwelcome way that tonight he hadn’t been able to concentrate on, well, anything, really.
All he wanted, therefore, was to leave, find some space and some distance to sort himself out.
However the moment he spied his brother first leading Abby onto the dance floor and then taking her into his arms, semi-engagement in the conversation turned to disengagement, his mood turned from bad to filthy and any intention he might have had of going vanished.
Oh, dammit all to hell. Just when he thought he’d got over his ridiculous fixation with Abby, there she was, right in front of him, derailing his thoughts and destroying his concentration.
All night he’d been aware of her, flitting in and out of the room while she presumably checked that everything was on track and kept Jake up to speed with what was going on. Every time he caught a glimpse of reddish-blonde hair he’d found his attention veering away from whatever conversation he was having in case it was her, which, nine times out of ten, it wasn’t.
This time, however, it was, although what she was doing on the dance floor and in Jake’s arms he had no idea.
Or did he? Hadn’t Jake mentioned he’d be asking her to dance? And hadn’t he, Leo, told him to go for it? He had, and given how persuasive he knew Jake could be he shouldn’t be surprised that Abby had fallen for it. It wasn’t his concern who she danced with, so that thing burning inside him wasn’t jealousy, of course, because that would be absurd. No, it was boiling frustration that he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind, that he was somehow off tonight, and that once a-bloody-gain the conversation he’d been sort of having was history, that was all.
‘Leo?’ said the woman beside him, and with annoying difficulty he snapped his attention away from the dance floor to his companion.
At least he could be sure that his expression reflected none of the mess churning around inside him, he thought, giving her a quick smile as if that might make up for the fact he didn’t have a clue what she’d been saying. ‘What?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Let’s talk next week,’ he said, going for non-committal and generic in the hope that it covered all bases, which apparently it did.
‘I’ll call you.’
‘Great,’ he said, his attention already fading and his gaze involuntarily sliding back to the dance floor, more specifically to the woman in the middle of it who was now beginning to move.
‘Would you like to dance?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘I see,’ said Anna? Hannah? Susanna? with a faint smile. ‘You’re the type that likes to watch.’
And it seemed he was, because despite his best efforts to the contrary he couldn’t take his eyes off Abby. At first she seemed to be messing around, dancing as cheesily as the music, but then something slower came on and her moves gentled, became less frenetic, more languid, more sinuous. Jake twirled her and dipped her, tried—and alarmingly pleasingly failed—to pull her in close, and the longer he watched, the more transfixed Leo became.
It was odd, he thought, his pulse beating unnaturally fast. It wasn’t as if she were the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, so why was he so aware of her? Why did he find her so arresting? So compelling? Why did he want to leap to his feet, shove Jake aside and take over?
None of it made any sense, and because it didn’t he didn’t like it one little bit. It meant he didn’t know what was happening and therefore wasn’t in control, which was a situation he hadn’t experienced for years and had taken great care to avoid.
But Abby was a situation he couldn’t avoid because unfortunately, later, he was going to have to seek her out.
When Jake had asked him before dinner if what had happened up there in his flat was going to be a problem he hadn’t needed to expand. They were both well aware that their reputation was a fragile thing. Not all their developments were popular and their opponents would